Should YOU buy this Brit-bashing T-shirt?

[nerdgirl 0]

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I had been meaning to respond, but everytime I got going my manager came around with a new task. Anyway a short response is this. I don't have time to google it but this is my interpretation of what the the Orient really covers. Southeast Asia. There is no denying that the people who live in this area have a different shape to their eyes, which is easily spotted.

If anybody ever told me that India was in Southeast Asia, I would asssume they never looked at a map of Asia or that they didn't know their North, South, East or West. That is typical but not exclusive to Americans. Anyhow, if somebody wants to say they are from Southeast Asia instead of Oriental, that is fine with me. But saying Asian just sound stupid to me. For that matter you may as well just say I am a person and don't want to be identified with and group or region, which to me would suggest feeling inadequate about yourself. But you can all make of that what you wish.

Setting aside the ad hominem for a moment. You're usually better & more engaging; we all have our 'touch stone' issues tho'.
I also have zero interest in making a discussion on the internet about diagnosing the psychological proclivities of other people skydivers - a substantive percentage of the general population thinks that alone qualifies us all for less than stable mental status.

[Back to more interesting stuff, im-ever-ho]:
What it does illustrate is how problematic the use of the word “Orient” and "Oriental" are.
Not political correctness and not prescriptive semantics.
It’s problematic w/r/t history, accuracy of your assertions, and reconciling those with facts.

Again, the Orient is everything east of historical Roman Christendom. (The Occident is the “west.”)
One of the most famous ‘Orientals’ was Edward Said [jpg], he was from the Levant but spent most of his adult life in NYC.
The Museum of the Ancient Orient is in Turkey; it displays Anatolian pieces from Hittite empires (Turkey) and pre-Islamic items from the Ottoman Empire.
The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London covers all of Asia, including India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and former Soviet States; the Near East; the Middle East; and Africa. It was originally the School of Oriental Studies.
The Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago is world-renowned for its ancient Near-eastern artifacts (specifically Sumerian); the institute’s archeological interests range from Anatolia (ancient Turkey) to Nubia (ancient southern Egypt and Northern Sudan), through Syria, Yemen and Iraq (Mesopotamia) to Persia (Iran).
What was the destination of the Orient Express?

Those are current examples, off the top of my head, from the US, Europe, and Turkey of how the “Orient” doesn’t mean just Southeast Asia (or just East Asia) geographically or the genetic phenotype you cited.

Has the meaning of the word evolved and narrowed/shifted in its meaning for some? Yes. Languages do that.
Does it mean something very different geographically for a lot of other people counter to what you’ve asserted? Yes.
Has the word come to have a pejorative connotation for a tremendously large geographic span of peoples? Yes. Then again, the primary definition of “gay” is no longer a synonym for “happy” and in the US “fags” generally do not refer to small cigarettes.

VR/Marg

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying

[pirana 0]

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I prefer "Fat kids are harder to kidnap"

That is very funny. Be funnier though if it read

"Because really obese kids are harder to kidnap."

Of course it would only be funny if a fat kid was wearing it.

" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

[Andy9o8 3]

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I prefer "Fat kids are harder to kidnap"

That is very funny. Be funnier though if it read

"Because really obese kids are harder to kidnap."

Of course it would only be funny if a fat kid was wearing it.

Please. They're not "fat" or "obese". That's rude.
They're dimensionally-challenged.